this post was submitted on 30 May 2026
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Fuck AI

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I looked at the rsync commit log and basically every commit since March says "tridge and claude committed." Andrew Tridgell, the guy who literally invented rsync in 1996. Now hes using a chatbot to write the code and proudly displaying its name right there in the commit.

And before anyone goes "calm down its just a typo fix" no. The recent stuff is the security fixes for 3.4.3. The symlink race CVEs.. You know, the exact part where you want an actual human who understands what hes doing, not a machine that spits out code that looks correct but has correctness errors.

Do you get how insane this is? Rsync is the thing holding up basically every backup system on earth. Your NAS uses it. Distro mirrors use it. The server with you grandmas photos uses it. And now the plan is to let a token predictor that can't even count the amount of letter R's in "strawberry" write code for it.

"But the tests pass." The tests pass because the AI probably wrote the tests too you walnut. Its a loop of confident nonsense thats grading its own homework, and the first time it hits an edge case nobody fed it its gonna silently corrupt something and noone notices till the backups are already poisoned.

I'm pinning v3.4.1 and not updating again. If you defend this, dont say nobody warned you when the data loss posts start appearing.

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[–] cupcakezealot@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 points 20 hours ago

can't wait for timeshift to delete my entire harddrive

[–] DavidGA@lemmy.world 131 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

OpenBSD forked it a while ago as “openrsync”. It’s already the default on macOS.

[–] tinsuke@lemmy.world 25 points 2 days ago

Nice!

https://github.com/kristapsdz/openrsync

This is an implementation of rsync with a BSD (ISC) license. It's compatible with a modern rsync (3.1.3 is used for testing, but any supporting protocol 27 will do), but accepts only a subset of rsync's command-line arguments.

But also:

The actual work of porting is matching the security features provided by OpenBSD's pledge(2) and unveil(2). These are critical elements to the functionality of the system. Without them, your system accepts arbitrary data from the public network.

rsync has specific running modes for the super-user. It also pumps arbitrary data from the network onto your file-system. openrsync is about 10 000 lines of C code: do you trust me not to make mistakes?

[–] Stefan_S_from_H@piefed.zip 49 points 2 days ago
[–] carrylex@lemmy.world 39 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Did they really need AI to set a number to 45?!? Also you can do this centrally in the repo settings and don't need to do it on every single workflow!

Conclusion: Garbage code

[–] wulrus@lemmy.world 1 points 20 hours ago

lol - I don't use any AI code in projects I'm paid for at all, but I experiment in my free time. One of the few advantages is that I can keep going when I'm completely braindead, like before first coffee or when I should have gone to bed 3 hours ago. So I prompt things like "run those test thingies" when I can't even remember the gradle/maven task that I use 50 times per week.

So yes, for me, strangely relatable :-)

[–] aesthelete@lemmy.world 13 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

This is what AI does...it "removes the friction" of doing large scale find and replace operations consistently so your whole repository becomes terrible, repetitive patterns because it made it much easier to do the wrong thing.

[–] turmacar@lemmy.world 11 points 2 days ago (1 children)

My question is if that number is set/used separately in all those places why isn't it defined somewhere more centrally. It's silly that you need to update so many files for such a simple change.

[–] aesthelete@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I once worked with a dude that basically maintained what would've been a database in a reasonable code base through a series of data structures hard-coded into the Java code. When there were changes, he would roll through the dozens of files and add additional records into the code. AI has probably made his "job" a snap...if he still has one.

[–] GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 14 points 2 days ago
[–] wewbull@feddit.uk 18 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Well... That's one way to ask the community to take-over maintenance.

[–] Janx@piefed.social 3 points 2 days ago

They're not asking.

[–] cronenthal@discuss.tchncs.de 61 points 2 days ago (4 children)

Since a senior engineer is clearly in the loop here I wouldn't pass judgement on these commits without looking at their actual content. LLMs can be used responsibly, too.

[–] Nalivai@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

There are reported bugs https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@JeremiahFieldhaven/116654345332213390
The thing is, LLM can theoretically used be responsibly, just like heroin can be used in a way that doesn't cause crippling addiction. But nobody does that, and that's kind of the problem.

[–] Zos_Kia@jlai.lu 19 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Yeah the role of the maintainer is to gatekeep the quality of the finished product. As long as they do that it's fine. The contributor could be a clanker or a junior trying to get their first PR, I don't care cause the person I trust is the maintainer.

Rsync's creator has been maintaining load bearing infra since before I learned to code, if you can't trust them who can you trust?

[–] green_goglin@thelemmy.club 20 points 2 days ago

Fuck all clankers.

[–] T156@lemmy.world 6 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

There was also a little debacle a while ago that VS Code was misattributing everything committed in git by users with its default CoPilot extension as being co-written by CoPilot.

Something like that could also be happening here.

[–] CannedYeet@lemmy.world 8 points 2 days ago

I wonder if I still have any of those Linux CDs I burned years ago

[–] ApertureUA@lemmy.today 16 points 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Saw a post somewhere else on it but my instance can't load it now for some reason.

Anyways, here's the Discord dump for those who don't want to join (Tor not allowed, sorry I don't have a better file host, AI brought down 0x0.st). No further commentary.

[–] dontbelievethis@sh.itjust.works 11 points 2 days ago (1 children)

While you criticize someone for just accepting things, you didn't check if that is actually the case?

[–] Fizz@lemmy.nz 8 points 2 days ago (2 children)

If its bad code then you can audit it and claim those bug bounties. Its a well known project with a lot of eyes on it I think the quality will remain high.

[–] rainwall@piefed.social 21 points 2 days ago
[–] flamingos@feddit.uk 36 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

lot of eyes on it I think the quality will remain high

This was bullshit when Raymond argued it in the 90s and it's even more bullshit now.

[–] ghodawalaaman@programming.dev 9 points 2 days ago (1 children)

it is bullshit because there are no "lot of eyes" on the project. not because the statement is wrong!

[–] mrdown@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 2 days ago

Use the last non vibe coded version